Phil Starr

Hi David, I'm sorry to hear about your dad. I hadn't crossed paths with him but he sounds like a generous spirit as are so many on BassChat. I would strongle advise you to go onto theBassChat marketplace. There's a whole community of folks there buying and selling treasured gear where you will get good advice and a fair price for almost everything bass and music related. You'll need to take up an annual subscription to sell there but you'll know everything you sell there will be going to a good home and will be treasured or at leased used to make music. You can also search for items and see what they have sold for in the past which will give you a really good idea of what they are actually fetching. There is even a 'what's it worth' sub forum where you can ask other members to price up what you have to sell https://www.basschat.co.uk/forum/121-wotzit-werth/ It might also be worth putting something about your father passing away on the General Discussion thread as people who know him might miss your post in the introductions https://www.basschat.co.uk/forum/13-general-discussion/ Its not uncommon for 'In Memorium' posts to be put up there and other friends of your father might see that and offer help. Good luck with everything and I hope one day you will find time to learn to play something on that Rickenbacker.

I'll have a go though I've just been reading Colloms (High Performance Loudspeakers ISBN 047197091) and I have to admit this will be a simplification. The conventional theory around loudspeakers treats them as being rigid pistons The original transducers used in the classic experiments on beaming were done with very small metal discs mounted on the end of long tubes which avoided diffraction further complicating the dispersal patterns. The irregular dispersion of real world speakers at high frequencies is to a large extent due to the fact that loudspeaker cones are very far from rigid. To a large extent means that there are many other factors at play which cause frequency irregularities. but I'll keep it simple and stick to the cone.. So speaker cones are flexible, at low frequencies and power they are stiff enough to move as a whole and approximate to a piston. At high frequencies and powers they will start to flexand the outer parts of the cone will lag behind the movement of the coil, some parrts of the cone may be moving backwards as other parts are moving forwards and the phase difference will cause cancellation . It's fairly easy to see this with a strobe light with concenrtic rings in the cone moving independently of each other even as the cone itself moves backwards and forwards. You can also find laser interferometry pics of this which illustrate the process.This means just calculating of axis cancellation on the basis of diameter will not describe the off axis frequency cancellation by itself. This is often described as cone break up and you'll see this in the frequency response curves of just about any cone speaker. You can see this below in a typical 12" speaker The response in red is fairly flat up to just above 1kHz and then you can see a ripple in the reponse due to the cone break up and the treble response shows a rising response between 1and 4kHz because the centre of the cone is moving faster than the outside as it becomes decoupled from the heavier outside parts of the cone. The ripple is because the cone has resonances of its own. You can also see the off axis response in Blue is falling off initially due to the off axis cancellation but then due to the resonances as the cone flexes. Designers know about all of this and many instrument speakers take advantage of that midrange peak in the kHz area. Almost any Celestion or Eminence guitar speaker will show hage peakes in this area. So will something like the Eminence used in the Barefaced one10 or indeed the Ampeg 10" speakers. A cone can be made more or less rigid by changing the fibres in the pulp, by changing the shape of the cone, introducing ridges changing the cone surround or by using a metal cone or a plastic or even a composite . Adding a hard dust cover or a whizzer cone will also allow you to adjust the treble output of the speaker and another technique is to introduce a damping material into the cone or even treating the cone after it is formed. It's worth noting that it isn't unusual to have considerable off axis output from 15" speakers and it is possible for them to exceed the off axis response from a 10" speaker. The simple explanation is that a small cone is going to be more rigid than a bigger cone made of the same material.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think Trump's policies are likely to get very far in practice. We all know how powerful the lobbyists are in the US and I can only imagine how the likes Of Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and the rest of the military industrial complex are responding to this, hit by tariffs and ultimately losing sales as America becomes an unreliable military ally. My thoughts on this were to ask myself could the USA survive an isolationist/protectionist stance. In practice there are far too many powerful forces that would become losers however well thought out the restructuring might be. I'm now asking myself how Europe would look in a world of extensive trade wars. For me the hardest thing to calculate is where global capital might find a home if Trump de-stabilises the dollar as a result of his mismanagement. He does have a point that trade with China has resulted in a huge transfer of wealth from the USA to it's increasingly aggressive rival.What would be the effects of an all out trade war on currencies, investment decisions and so on. We can see disinvestment in UK manufacturing due to us being outside the trade barriers, how would that play if the USA were the other side of much higher trade barriers and even more uncertainty. Could the US face a Truss moment? Do I buy a lettuce now?

Given some previous posts I suspect your knowledge of economics is more than passable. Probably a lot better than the current administration in the USA I suspect the current tariffs are more about bullying than economics. Hit your trading partners hard and they will scurry around trying to appease you, figuring the cost will be less than trying to fight with an irrational and unpredictable but powerful neighbour. However the long term theory is quite interesting, I'm not convinced it is sound for most advanced economies but it does have plus points. In many ways the model of this sort of economy is Japan. I have a family connection in that my son leved there for 10 years and it is a fascinating place. A kind of science fiction story set in a planet that has split from out universe decades ago and has drifted from ours in ways which are perfectly reasonable but different frm the assumptions we take for granted. One of these is that in many ways Japan is a planned economy and deliberately protects itself from much of the rest of the world. Japan has a lot of tariffs and the state invests heavily into what it sees as strategic industies, recent trade agreements have eaten into this but one example is the tariff on rice. Rice has an almost spiritual significance in Japan and the Japanese believe their home grown rice is the best in the world, however thay are a long way from being self sufficient in agricultural production. To protect the farmers and to keep rice prices high they have an 800% tariff on rice imports, That's not a miss-pring 800% and I checked the figure yestrday. 800% on American rice imports brings the price up to match the cost of Japanese grown rice. Similar tariffs if less extreme protect the home market in many other goods and you see very few goods not produced in Japan in the shops or in peoples houses. There is very little of the cheap Chinese c**p we find in most of our shops. Taxes are strikingly low in Japan and employment is high and their relationship with the consumer society is very different from ours, the provision of services from the state puts us to shame most of the time. The trick of good state provision with low taxes is to insulate themselves from the rest of the world and tariffs are a part of that. The exchange rate is really volatile which is a downside. When my son first went there the exchange rate was 107Y to the £. currently it is 192Y so the cost of UK goods will have nearly doubled. This of course is of no consequence to the Japanese as they only buy things produced within the Yen economy. The downside is you need to be self sufficient as far as possible as any imported goods/raw materials are extraordinarily expensive. The USA is in a great position to become a closed economy, it is a huge country with extensive raw material wealth (including extensive rare earths btw) the realtively low population density means it can easily feed itself and the huge geographical are it covers means it can grow almost anything somewher in the country. It also has protected many strategic industries and the high levels of investment in tech companies means it is almost impregnable there too. My belief is that the US could erect trade barriers with a lot of short term issues for it's population but whch could allow it to maintain a very high standard of living. They gain a lot of benefit from the dollars position as the leading reserve currency but changes in that position would largely only affect the wealthy. The US is in a better position than almost anywhere else in the world to run an isolationist economy. I don't think they need international trade in the way that Europe or China do. I stress that this is strictly a thought experiment on my part, a break from worrying about speaker designs and the intricacies of PA systems. I honestly don't think in a million years the White House incumbency is thinking this way but I didn't think the Russians would invade Ukraine so what do I know

This is the kind of conversation you should be having. It avoids tears later on. It's fine for a singer to say they don't want to be in a blues band. I played briefly for a mate's band Strange Brew, . He is a great singer (sang for Jools Holland Big band) and front person and a good friend and the guitarist was pretty good too but it was a bit of an Eric Clapton tribute band and frankly not what I wanted to spend my evenings playing. I played along with them whilst they got their set together with the promise I'd drop out when they found another bassist which they fairly quickly did. It was fun but just not music I wanted to gig every other weekend. Equally I love a good blues band and there is absolutely no reason for you to change if it's what you know and love, you just need to find a fellow traveller. That's kind of what I mean about honesty in your advertising, maybe clarity would be a better word. Find a way of clearly describing your music and make sure you get a set list to potential singers early on and it saves time auditioning people who are looking for something different. You know your set will have to change with a new singer. You'll want to do the songs they perform really well and in turn they might want to lose a few songs that don't suit their voice but within your genre there are probably hundreds of great songs so you'd be looking to evolve your set not just trash it There's no harm in looking at a range of people to try and find your best match. There's also no harm in them looking at you and maybe mutually agreeint the fit isn't quite right. I hope you find your singer, good luck.

When I started on BassChat i used to obsess about all the technical things but over the years I've realised music making is far more about the human elements. Recruitment is about being positive of course but also about being honest. Recruiting someone who is 'wrong' for the band can be hugely disruptive and can easily loose you six months of hard won progress, equally if the band is 'wrong' for the recruitee then you are wasting their time as well as your own. First of all band dynamics; who is in charge? How do you make decisions? I've tended to be the band leader in most of my bands, a not quite democracy where I've done all the physical things like getting gigs, providing PA, organising rehearsals and puling a set list together but trying to make sure everyone has a say. One of my happiest experiences though was with a band led by a married couple where I was just the bass player. Turned up played whatever I was asked and got paid. I think a lot of friction I've seen in bands is down to misleading expectations starting with the recruitment process. That also extends to genre/repertoire If you are an originals band then you need to be sure your new singer is happy to sing what you have written. If your music is mainly Ska you probably don't want to have a singer whose taste is for power ballads. Most of my bands have been covers bands, usually with 10 or so gigs booked at any given time. Any recruit would be expected to get on top of the set within a month so we don't have to cancel gigs and let our regular venues down. That usually means that the incoming musician will have to already know a good proportion of our set or enough of the cover band standards to allow us to keep gigging. We wouldn't be looking to comletely overhaul our set to make way for another musician however good they might be. You need to get together with the rest of the band and decide exactly what you are looking for, what is essential, what is desirable and what is just nice to have. A new singer/front person is the most disruptive thing to recruit. You can't ask a singer to re-tune to drop D or capo them to convert a Tenor into a Soprano They are limited to songs that suit their voice and frankly songs they are happy to sell to an audience. What do you have to sell? If you've been together for a while you are probably quite tight musically and have good relationships within the band. That's the band we all want to join. If you have gigs booked or regular venues then that is a real selling point. There are thousands of start up bands that are going to do 'great things' but a band that played everyother week last year and intends doing the same next year is a much better bet. Is your PA sorted? Do you have rehearsal spaces organised? There is no point in lying, just be clear what you want and what you are prepared to compromise over. Be prepared to walk away from recruiting if you have reservations but be aware that you will have to make compromises too. Check the new persons ego by all means but check your own too. Remember the auditions are just the first date and a blind date too, you don't have to go all the way if it doesn't feel right

Early days, how many bands are still going two years after forming/re-forming. I'd be running with both, giviing them my all and enjoying the ride, it'll be a long ride before you get overwhelmed. If both bands are popular and successful well there are worse problems for a musician.

A snapping sound doesn't sound good, it may be the speaker coil hitting the back of the magnet assembly If you hear this you need to back off the gain/volume and maybe roll off the bass. If this is indeed what is happening then your speaker will break fairly soon. Speaker watts and amplifier watts are measured differently and I doubt that many if any 10" speakers could 'handle' 300W at low frequencies without distorting or hammering the coil to destruction on the back plate of the magnet. More watts aren't an option with this speaker I suspect. Getting a second matching 10" speaker should give you nearly 6db extra sound and help a lot. With DB you may get feedback issues though. Where is your speaker? if it is on the ground then it will be pointing at your knees or your calves and not your ears. Raising the speaker or tilting it to point at your ears with a stand will improve matters a lot. Turning the bass down a little and turning the midrange up will also help. Turning the bass down will decrease the excursion your speaker is failing to cope with and the midrange is what we need to hear any detail in the bass above the rest of the instruments. Pointing your cab at your ears and re=eq'ing will help you in the short term and give you time to think about next steps. Good Luck

I liked those two songs and it's easy to see why you have a hunger to do it again. Good solid playing too so I can see why you wouldn't want the standards to fall there either. I absolutely don't think your expectations are unreasonable but they are quite high which means your odds of achieving them are reduced. You are asking foir a high level of creative input into the music that means you would also expect to be one of the bands driving forces and effectively a band leader. You've been co-writing songs so you are obviously a co-operator but also quite driven and demanding which probably comes with being creative. Your tastes are probably more niche than you think, I had to google all the bands you listed, the 90's not really being my decade. You've been playing for nearly 40 years so you are probably late 50's so the people you want to hook up with are probably a similar age. You are fishing in a diminishing pool. Your contemporaries will have their peak of work and family commitments and many will no longer be playing, those that have continued throughout will be in established bands playing sets they are happy with. Many will have succumbed to the lure of covers bands and regular paid gigs. Existing bands looking for a bassist will want you to play their sets at least initially. I'm not saying thai to be depressing but it's a bit like dating in later life; by this time you know what you want, there's no point in an unsatisfactory relationship but at the same time dating is more demanding than when you were younger and more pliant. It's worth thinking about what is really essential and what you might be prepared to compromise on. I suppose if I've any advice it's maybe to look for a creative partner you can work with. Two of you are halfway to forming a band and between you will be a strong driving force. There are plenty of fine musicians who are not particularly driven but like to play with a properly organised going concern. Anyway good luck with your search, I hope you find your people.

I haven't read the whole thread so apologies if this is repeating information you have already. You need some searchable web presence IMO I'm not sure any particular source is 'best'. If you are canvassing venues or handing out business cards most people will want to check you out so a website they can be directed to on your card is kind of essential. A lot of people who aren't web savvy still use Facebook and that includes an awful lot of pubs and other venues. It is still the most widely used media for pubs and covers bands. You are kind of stuck with it useless though it is. On the plus side Facebook Marketplace is a good place to pick up secondhand kit The biggest problem with Facebook is that it is swamped by people with great social media skills and good looking pages for mythical bands that rarely or never gig. Nobod visits unless they know you already. Sound and fury signifying nothing! A dedicated website with a band specific domain name is really professional looking and gives you lots of control. Most function bands operate that way. Booking agents often insist on these too so if you have multiple agents this is a way to go. In a few areas Lemonrock.com is a great place to be as it is a dedicated site where venues will go looking for bands, I pick up a dozen bookings a year that way. It depends upon a certain critical mass however. In the West Country is is great and around St Albans and surrounding areas it is equally good, the rest of the country you'd have to check. Whatevcer you do make sure you have good quality sound and video for people to see so anybody genuinely wanting to book a band can check you out. A set list of other indication of what your music is probably a good idea too.

I'm looking for a big favour. Is anyone regularly travelling in my direction who could pick up a bass sub from Bedminster and meet up with me somewhere this end? Taunton or Yeovil would be good but I live in Chard. I can't get up to Bristol in the next couple of weeks. I'm happy to make a donationt towards petrol if that helps.

All cabs are 'designed' in that the cab is matched to a particular driver and if you swap that driver then it will be in a sub-optimal cab. In extreme cases you can seriously reduce the power handling of the driver and any sub optimal cab will have the bass response compromised. Fortunately most bass drivers of a given size and made for bass or PA use will cluster around a similar set of specs and work (sort of) in the 'wrong' cab. The crazy 8 has a tweeter and is a flat response design. The BassChat 8 has a single driver and hopefully is a 'musical' design. I did look at a wide range of other speakers for the BC8 and the Fane 225 is the best option for this design. That's not just the Thiele Small numbers but frequency response sensitivity, excursion and even price. The other thing is to be wary of shopping by spec. Partly because adverts lie. Also you probably don't want any output below (arguably) 50Hz or so, particularly if it is in a domestic environment where room dimensions are probably smaller than the 30Hz wavelength. The BC8 has -10db @ 45Hz which is pretty good, more importantly it is fairly flat though the whole of the bass range giving good rendition of the crucial second harmonics of the bass. Rather than thinking about the specs think more in terms of wht you are trying to achieve musically and practically.

Still the recommended driver. Here's the 8" cab

Sorry I haven't found time to model the two speakers but @David Morisonhas modelled the bass response and it is just as you would expect from the changes they've made. I'd say that for bass guitar the 12CMV2 is the better speaker of the two for bass. It's also increased in price by 60% since I recommended it and is now in a price bracket where there are quite a few rivals. https://www.bluearan.co.uk/index.php?id=LAVWSN12250AF is a lightweight Neo speaker at a surprisingly low price https://www.bluearan.co.uk/index.php?id=FANSOV12300_2 currently looks a beter bet than the 12CMV3 and there are a few more speakers which are possibilitiesThe Celeston Pulse 12 looks promising. I note that you ay this is for home use mainly. The advantage of the 12CMV is that it is a high excursion speaker and will threfore go louder than some of it's rivals. The spec of this design was to build a single driver cab capable of live work with a loud drummer on it's own. For home use it is overkill. The 8" design would be better sounding and have a deeper bass at the expense of a lower but still good maximum volume The 110T would give you a really clean sound and isn't far short of the 12 in volume. I've a wide range of cabs here and it is the 110T that I gig with most frequently. It's full range flat response, really compact and portable and loud enough for 60% of gigs and pretty much any rehearsal

PS this probably belongs in the Amps and Cabs section rather than PA Welcome to Bass Chat btw.

I've had a brief look, they've changed the cone a little lightening it by 10g there's a corresponding increase in sensitivity and they've changed the suspension as well a little. the coil and magnet remain the same so power handling and excursion limits remain unchanged. The HF response of the speaker has changed with more noticable HF breakup in the older version. That's to be expected with a different/less stiff cone and a smoother response might have been what they were aiming for, though it may be a cost saving thing and they may just be rationalising so they can stock fewer cone types by sharing across different models. I'd probably go for the Mk2 if you are building without a tweeter as the cone breakup gives you a boost in the high mids which will help you cut through a bit more in the mix. The differences aren't huge though. I'll have a look later and re-model the system in WinISD to see if there is anything unexpected going on Thanks for the heads up, this is still a good value for money driver so I'll check it is still suitable. Are you planning on building the 50l or the 30l cab?

I think you'll find that settings are saved to the mixer so you will need to be connected. The tablet is just a control surface and that makes sense, otherwise you would lose everything if you used a different tablet.

If you are using an x32 then this looks like a great way to go. Never having used one (and apologies if this is a false steer) the behringer offers a digital snake/ultranet system with loads of add ons to send individual channels to a DAW or their personal monitoring system and I'd be looking to see if that might be utilised too. If you can send 32 channels to a DAW you ought to be able to send them to FOH. I almost always find provided PA's a problem. It's usually at an event where there are multiple bands and only the headline act gets much co-operation from underskilled techs who are reluctant to change a system they don't fully understand because it has been hired in and set up by the hire company. You may of course find that the better ones already have split the feed between FOH and the stage monitors. I suspect whatever you do will involve some negotiation but most should cope with the simple 2x8 splitters you propose and the loom gives and extra option. I'd love to see their little faces when you suggest unplugging 5 mics and 6 instrument feeds, some of them stereo and relying on someone elses snake for the FOH sound

It’s good to see/hear that it is still being debated and that minds are still open in the team. If we are honest they often aren’t kept open by some in the ‘political’ threads. It’s a shame that sometimes people forget their manners in political debates and it’s that behaviour that needs to be kept out of BC not the debate itself. I love the early discussions of the big issues in BC. It’s rare to get the chance to talk politics with people who come from a different background to ourselves. We all live in bubbles where we are rarely challenged. If our friends disagree with us they are often too polite to disagree. The only thing we all share is music and bass. For the rest we are strangers and we should expect to be challenged. i can understand why the mods don’t want to referee the political debates. They often start well but end up with a couple of the usual suspects trying to score points off each other on page after page. Moderating this must become tedious. I’m of the opinion that the earlier debate is worthwhile and would love to see more of it. Maybe allow free debate but shut it up after it gets repetitive and or rudeness starts to creep in.

I’m absolutely finding that bookings for the duo are a lot easier than for the band at the moment. We’ve turned the set around but I’m sure price is just as important. As you know a lot of pubs in the SW are pretty small and I’ve often wondered whether a band ever made financial or practical sense for the smaller venues. I think the combination of Covid and austerity has made a lot of places re-evaluate their entertainment budgets also. I feel bad about it but we’ve looked hard at what we offer as a duo and upped our game. We’ve programmed drum tracks and added a few rhythm guitar backings which has opened up a lot of the cover band repertoire to the duo so we are effectively undercutting the market for the full band. Everything is easier with a smaller outfit; fewer egos, easier to get together for rehearsals, quicker set ups, everyone pulling their weight and of course more money with fewer mouths to feed. Fortunately money is not that important for me. The band is more fun and more challenging so despite the lower pay and extra stress it’s where I want to be. When the band really gels and the room is responding there’s no experience quite like it.

That would be asking a lot The 112 has state of the art drivers and one of the best crossovers you'll ever see in a bass cab and it costs maybe 6x the price of the little 8". You should however get quite a 'grown up' bass for such a small cab and a nice musical sound but nothing like FRFR. Anyway I hope you like it

you can use vane bracing on the back panel; ribs of whatever material you have,maybe plywood offcuts. This creates a T beam structure so 25mm added to a 15mm gives you 40mm of stiffening along that part of the panel. You'll get less stiffening for a given weight of brace though but its very easy to apply. You don't need to glue everything in you can add a coupleof pieces of ply to your cross brace and then screw through the baffle into the bits you've added, or glue one end of the brace and use screws on the other end.

I confess I always use woodscrews on my prototypes with the intention of replacing them with T-nuts and rarely get round to doing it. After dozens of gigs with some of the prototypes none so far have ever had a problem, it just feels a bit shoddy I suppose

I've always used a simple strap handle on my smaller cabs, up to and including the BC110T, I have a Monza too as my 'posh' cab and like the look of the handle, which is great but it's a much more awkward carry than a simple strap, not least because the strap is on the side panel so the speakers don't bang on your lower leg. It's also along the COG line so the balance is good. Anything bigger and I put two handles, one on either side.

I'm not clear whether by "smaller tops" you mean using the DBR12's with subs or replacing the DBR's with something else and buying a sub. Using the DBR's with a sub would give you some extra headroom and a solid bass but the yamaha's are decent speakers so I'm not sure a 12" Alto will give you that much more. I'm curious as to what you think the shortcomings of your DBR's are in a small venue. I think you are basically asking whether a couple of 12's + sub or a couple of RCF 715's would be 'best'. Honestly I don't think the difference in sound quality or volume would be that great in practice, both solutions would have pro's and con's. properly placed and set up subs can add a lot to small speakers. In practice when you only have 45mins to set up for a gig I wonder how often they will be set up well. A second RCF715 might well give you what you want and if it is the simple and cheaper option there is no reason not to go that route. No reason why they shouldn't sound great and equally no reason why the DBR's with a sub would't sound great either. Perhaps if you tell us what exacly you are trying to fix with the current set up or what you hope to achieve we could give a clearer steer